section 8
Learning to communicate better
3 years
49 meeting
Let’s review:
Once the meeting starts, welcome everyone and ask the participants: • Who can help us remember what we talked about in our last meeting? • Who was able to do the activity at home that we asked you to do at the end of the meeting? How did it go? • Does anyone have questions or concerns after doing the activity?
What are we going to learn? We are going to learn how to promote the development of language and communication in a three-year-old.
LET’S TALK ABOUT IT! We are going to look at some pictures, so we can talk about what we all know about this topic.
How often does someone read to your young child? Why do you think it is important to read to a child?
What other types of activities can be helpful to develop a child’s abilities? What learning activity does your child like? Why do you think they like it?
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Activity:
“Understanding each other” We are going to practice activities that help develop language and communication.
What we’ll need: • Flipchart paper • Markers • Index cards
WHAT WE’LL DO: Ask three participants to volunteer and give them the name of three well-known songs. • Have each try to communicate the name of the song to the group without using words, only gestures (like charades). • If a long time passes and the group is not able to guess the name of the song, ask the group to help out. • When all the songs have been guessed, have the group come up with a few reasons why communication is so important – write the reasons on the flipchart. Discuss ideas from people’s own experience. • Divide the participants into five small groups. Give each group a card with activities they can practice with the children that are present (see below). Give them 10-15 minutes to develop the activity. • At the end have the groups comment on the activity, what they thought of it and other ideas they suggested to help stimulate language development and children’s creativity. ACTIVITIES FOR LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT: Repeat the following rhymes and make up gestures to accompany the rhyme. (this should be adapted to each country/regional context):
This old man, he played one,
God made day and God made night,
He played knick knack with his thumb,
He split darkness from the light.
With a knick, knack, paddy whack,
God made you and God made me,
Give the dog a bone;
And God made the animals A thru Z.
This old man came rolling home.
• Tell them short stories. Act out some of the activities from the story. For example, if the story talks about a jumping frog, jump around to imitate the frog. • Make a star or circle on a paper and tape them to different body parts as you say them (knee, chest, arm, leg, etc.). You can take turns saying the parts of the body. • Teach the colors, red, yellow and blue. Show the child different objects that are these colors and ask them what color each object is. • Show children pictures cut out from magazines or newspapers and ask them questions about the pictures. Invite them to give answers with explanations, for example if it’s a picture of a horse say, “Where is the horse’s mother? Why is the horse sad?”
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Summing Up:
What did we learn today? Now, we’ll review what we discussed today. • How do you feel after this meeting? Why? • What are the two most important things you’ve learned today? • What will you do differently based on what you learned during the meeting? • What did you like the most? Are there things you didn’t like? • Do you have any remaining concerns or questions about what we talked about? To finish, what would you recommend to improve today’s meeting when we do it again with another group. (Explain that answering this question will help the meeting be even better in the future for parents with small children.)
To do at home:
Tell families to write a short story and at the next meeting everyone can share their story in order to make a book of stories about the community.
Basic information for the facilitator: Learning more about how to communicate better: Starting with this meeting, we’ll begin to talk about reasoning as a separate issue, since it’s a process that needs to be stimulated in a more direct and specific way.
1- Reasoning: At this age we can see that children begin to have more organized ideas and expressions, so it’s important to start to stimulate specific areas.
• Verbal Reasoning: Children need to increase the number of words they’ve memorized so they can express themselves orally with greater efficiency. It is suggested that during playtime you ask them to say the names of objects, images, body parts, etc. For a child it is easier to memorize vocabulary if they start with things that are closest to them. For example, start with their body parts, their house, the rooms in the house, food, furniture, etc. Then with these words play with children by making up sentences using colors, and making them longer each time. For example: “My house is blue.” Then: “My house is red and blue, the same colors as the tablecloth.” • Mathematical Reasoning: Start by playing with sizes (large, small, medium) and shapes (square, triangle, circle).
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2- Pre-Reading: For children to enjoy learning to read, they should have access from this age to
books with lots of pictures, stories about animals, people and objects. Those close to the child should dedicate an hour daily to read and explain stories to them, also giving them chance to start telling you stories. The best time for reading is when the child is calming down, generally right before bed. If we notice the child has fallen asleep then make sure you read at other times of the day as well, to make sure they don’t connect reading with sleeping. Starting with these vocabulary and reading activities will make things a lot easier for a child when they go to school and learn the process of reading. If the maternal language is different than what children will learn at school, it is suggested that you go over vocabulary and reading in both languages: first their native tongue and then the one they’ll use later. For children to learn a second language, it’s necessary for them to have a large vocabulary in their first language as a reference for when they’re learning the second one.
3- Pre-Writing: At this age, children start to make strokes with greater intention than before, they are no longer scribbling without form or intention. Their scribbling starts to become clearer and they are going to want to start to draw.
The best way to is to let children use both hands with big crayons and that you allow them to enjoy what they are doing. It is suggested that once a week we ask the child to draw us something specific (something easy) like a balloon or a river – things with few lines. At the same time, you can show them how you draw with few lines in order to encourage them. Then you can move on to shapes (circles, squares and triangles) and the concept of small and large shapes. These first lines will help children start learning how to write. NEVER: scold or criticize children if they don’t draw how you want them to, at their age and for their development, they should always receive an applause and congratulations on what they have done well.
Facilitator’s Manual